LESSONS OF THE COLD WAR

Something John Derbyshire blogged yesterday got me to thinking.

A few inconsequential "rollback" exercises aside (Grenada, El Salvador), the Cold War was a war of containment. The object was to prevent the advance of totalitarian communism, most especially its futher advance into Europe, then seen as the heartland of Western Civ. The bet we placed was that communism was such a lousy way of organizing a society that it would eventually turn into something else, something less threatening. The bet worked with Russia.

Islamofascism is much less of a threat -- economically, militarily, and culturally -- than communism. Why would containment not work just as well, with the expectation that these societies would crumble and change even faster than the communists did? We'd need to be vigilant against fanatical terrorists of the 9/11 type, and against moves in the MME to develop nuclear weapons. The second of those must surely be easy, though -- just a matter of decent intelligence and an occasional Osirak-type military action. For the first, we need to keep out foreign Islamofascists the way we used to keep out foreign communists, and to keep a close watch on any home-grown ones we might produce, and to publicly demonize Islamofascism -- teaching our kids that it's evil, turning out movies and TV dramas that show it as an enemy, and so on. (Where is our Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. for this "new Cold War"?) Now THAT would be using the Cold War as a model! Unfortunately, it would fly in the face of all the dogmas of tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism that our society nowadays holds to be precious and inviolable.

Bush 41 took a lot of heat a few years ago for "not finishing the job in Iraq" by liberals opposed to finishing the job in 2003. I think Derb's thinking here mirrors Bush 41's thinking back then. He pretty much beat Saddam up, but rather than create a power vacuum with Iran next door, he decided that containing Hussein would result in fewer lives lost and more stability in the region. I think Bush made a reasonable decision at the time. The containment approach was also essential considering Congress had only authorized Bush to follow the charter of the United Nations and they didn't have the stomach for much more than getting Hussein out of Kuwait and away from the Saudi border.

What Bush 41 didn't anticipate was being defeated for re-election. Clinton had no desire to keep Saddam to the cease-fire agreement. Saddam was constantly pushing the limits of the no-fly zone and shooting at allied planes. He was skimming money out of the oil for food program. Clinton let his violations go on without punishment or worry. His administration was far more concerned with religious Zealots minding their own business in Waco, Texas. And, of course, if we're talking about how U.S. action creates terrorists we cannot forget that the Waco debacle resulted in Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing.

One essential reason for removing Saddam in 2003, and no administration official can say it out loud, is that Republicans cannot take for granted that future Democrats in the White House will focus on containment. In the post Vietnam era, Democrats no longer have the stomach to back up their threats with action, and therefore the world knows that American interests will not be fought for. Democrats will solve European problems like Serbia or Caribbean problems like Haiti, but they will not take hard stand on American interests. We may think that these tin horn dictators are ignorant of our ways, but they understand the division with American politics enough that they can just wait Republicans out for a Democrat.

By going to Iraq and letting the Iraqi people re-shape their own future, it keeps Democrats from backing down. If one is elected in 2008 it will make them take the Middle East situation more seriously. A failure in Iraq post Saddam will be the failure of whatever president is at the helm.

Had a Republican like Dewey or Taft been President at the end of World War II, the Russian/American problem may have taken a different track. The cold war may have ended before it began. But since Truman invented containment, it became the Democrat alternative to all-out war up and through 1968 and the Vietnam protests. By the time Carter came around, containment meant little more than boycotting the Olympics. Reagan ended the cold war not just by out-spending them, but spending enough money that they realized he was serious about fighting if it came to that. It was the "evil empire" attitude that made them think seriously. His idea of containment had muscle behind it.

Without Reagan, I'm sure that Russia would have had to evolve their economy to makeup for the scarcity that communism creates. I'm sure it would be more open today than it was in 1980. But I'm not sure it would have dissolved already. I tend to think modern day Russian would be more like China with more economic freedom but still little political freedom. Look at Castro and how he can survive after 45 years of American sanctions. The economic part is important, but the muscle part is what makes the change.

The Democrat party is split down the middle between moderates that will fight an enemy to America and lefties that consider America the villain in any confrontation. Since the moderates cannot win without the lefties, they end up having to back down to get elected. Liberal Blogs like Daily Kos hate Hilary Clinton for trying to take the moderate position on Iraq. Don't even mention Joe Lieberman around there. Among the grass roots, Howard Dean is considered the savior of the party.

Which brings up the question if American leftists hate war, why don’t they show the strength that prevents most wars? Because they hate American power more than they hate war. That’s why instead of honoring the troops they focus on the failures and casualty rates. They’d rather see a long war with more dying that discredits America than a quick war that emboldens America. Remember how they predicted mass casualties before we invaded Iraq and then showed not the least bit of relief when we stormed Baghdad mostly unhindered? It’s not all Democrats that feel this way, it’s probably a minority, but that minority is essential to their coalition.

Containment only works if everyone is on board. This reality means that Republicans have to fight more direct wars with unconditional surrender rather than sit back and let Democrats lose the peace.

AMERICA BAD, WORLD GOOD, SAYS LUCAS

Legendary "Star Wars" film creator George Lucas told a packed house the United States is a provincial country with a culture that has invaded the world via Hollywood.

"As long as there has been a talking Hollywood, Hollywood has had a huge impact on the rest of the world," Lucas said as he discussed his films and enhancing education with computer technology.

"I hate to say it, but television is one of the most popular exports," Lucas said.

People see shows such as "Dallas," about a wealthy Texas oil family, and decide they want the grand lifestyles portrayed, according to Lucas.

"They say that is what I want to be," Lucas said. "That destabilizes a lot of the world."

"There has been a conflict going on for thousands of years between the haves and the have-nots, and now we are in a position for the first time to show the have-nots what they do not have."

So Hollywood is exporting Americanism and doggone if it doesn't make people want to be Americans. Funny that he had to cite a 20 year old TV show to make his point about modern films.

George Lucas grew up as a middle class kid and became a billionaire by doing the things that he naturally loved doing. The world is full of artists and potential filmmakers with more talent that he, and yet they're trapped under the boot of poverty or some dictator and usually both. The export of American culture has helped end some of the repressive regimes and the job isn't over. Even Hollywood that does all it can to show capitalism as equal to corruption cannot hide the fact that people are free in so many ways.

Lucas made a daring trilogy in his youth that used classical Roman politics to create a cold war parable about good and evil. It was not only great entertainment, but it was uniquely American in its outlook. Sometime after he finished that project he turned to technology and created the best visual effects company in the world. Now you'd think that his success would tell him something about his fellow citizens and the country that made it possible. You'd think that a country that could defeat the Reds and the Nazis in one century could be elevated above "provincial."

I said last year that the problem with the prequels was that the originals were about a young man's struggle and that mirrored Lucas' own struggle as a young filmmaker. The second batch is about a spoiled whiney kid that wants to be recognized for his genius or else. And the movies empathize with the brat a little too much. This speech has helped me realize that Lucas couldn't make the old films again because he doesn't believe in good and evil anymore. It's not that Darth Vader was evil, but that he was a product of a bad environment. I think that's why he intentionally defiled his own films with those cheesy Special Edition scenes and effects. He's struggling with being famous for a mythology that he no longer believes in.

Later in the piece, Nancy Pelosi compares Lucas to Mozart and though lofty it's an interesting comparison, except Mozart died without going through a re-evaluation of his life's work. Since Mozart was more of a regional figure than a worldwide star, what if he had re-worked all his music at the end of his life and all we had to remember him by were the sad attempts at bettering that work which were already great?

Lucas was a protégé of Coppola, who was a talented Bolshevik. It's very possible that Lucas too considered himself a man of the left, but was apolitical enough in his youth that he didn't realize the implications of having good and evil characters. It's certainly not chic in a post 9-11 world. So like Spielberg his early movies were temperamentally conservative, but when he became more politically aware, he went a different direction as movie maker.

My biggest fear is that the gifted M. Night Shyamalan will someday succumb to the same peer pressure and decide to be fashionable instead of interesting. His early work reminds me so much of Lucas and Spielberg that my gut says that he will have a struggle with the same forces.

I AM REALLY STARTING TO LIKE THIS SUPREME COURT

The highest court should be heavily biased in favor of letting the decisions of the lower courts stand.

By The Associated PressTuesday, March 21, 2006

(AP) - Highlights of actions taken Monday by the Supreme Court. The justices:

Declined to take up an appeal from a Pittsburgh Steelers fan who claimed taxpayers in National Football League cities have been coerced into helping build costly new stadiums.

Refused to consider tossing out a $50 million damage award against Philip Morris USA to the family of a two-pack-a-day California smoker who died of cancer.

Affirmed a lower court decision against a photographer who claimed a federal decency law violated her free-speech rights to post pictures of sadomasochistic sexual behavior on the Web.

Declined to give Jonathan Pollard, now serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, access to records that could bolster his case for presidential clemency.

Said they would not consider reinstating Robert O. Marshall's death sentence in New Jersey in a case that inspired a best-selling book, "Blind Faith."

Refused to consider an appeal from former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who wants to withdraw his 1998 guilty plea to tax conspiracy.

Turned down a case that sought to open U.S. presidential elections to voters in Puerto Rico.

Refused to consider an appeal from Florida death row inmate William Van Poyck over DNA testing.

THE NEW YORKER ON BILL O'REILLY

Part of the pleasure of “The O’Reilly Factor” is knowing that O’Reilly is a guy with a temper, and he might lose it. He reddens, sits up, and presses the guest, who may begin to stammer helplessly (in which case O’Reilly usually pulls back), or to backpedal and make excuses, in the manner of Richard Rosenbaum (in which case O’Reilly keeps boring in), or to insult O’Reilly (in which case O’Reilly may begin yelling—the big payoff). He’s the beat cop for the American neighborhood, who may have been a little excessive at times, may occasionally have run afoul of Internal Affairs, but law-abiding folks trust him because they know he’s on their side. His liberal guests are like suspects he’s pulled over: in the end, he’s probably just going to frisk them and let them go with a genial warning, but if they try anything, well, he carries a nightstick for a reason.

That's a great piece of writing. It captures the show pretty well. Remember how Angry O'Reilly got at that little Bunny Rabbit Phil Donahue last year. Phil was blathering on about whether Bill would send his own kids to fight in Iraq and Bill said he would fight in Iraq himself. Donahue kept on with the Left's favorite hobby horse about how we're sending mere children to Iraq to fight. It's a great liberal slight-of-hand to make the argument about sending kids, becuase the defender either has to pipe in immediately that we're not sending kids, but well-trained adults, otherwise the liberal wins everytime regardless of what's said from then on.

O'Reilly took a different track. He has a relative of some sort, a nephew I think, fighting in Iraq. He somehow took Donahue's comment as a stain upon the service of that nephew and he threatened to run Donahue off the show. The whole thing seemed bizarre to me. Why do you invite Donahue on the show only to threaten to run him off like an umpire when he's just simply being the same Donahue we all know, rich and guilty as hell about it? I can't imagine Donahue intentionally insulting anyone, but here is O'Reilly all indignant. He even ran the segment the next night like a dog prancing around the chipmunk that he killed and brought home. I'm sure he thought he was standing up for his nephew and servicemen in general, but I just couldn't make the leap with him.

To me Bill O'Reilly is the essence of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, sort of. I started watching the Factor sometime in 1999, I think. I enjoyed it most leading up to the 2000 election. I think I watched it nearly every night for a year. I even read THE NO SPIN ZONE soon after it was published. I loved the way O'Reilly stood up to nonsense.

But after that election, I realized that O'Reilly just has too many axes to grind. He constantly plays the underdog, trying to be my defender. He has a policy solution for everything if we'd only listen, and thus he's the anti-Libertarian. People can't simply live their lives without government intervention, because O'Reilly has to many injustices to right.

After I had already tired of his shtick, he published WHO'S LOOKING OUT FOR YOU?, a rhetorical question I assumed with O'Reilly as the hero. I can imagine that book is list after list of populist pining for things that the big boys are denying the poor working class slob. And I'm supposed to tune in as that working class slob so O'Reilly can explain the legislation that will cure me.

I think I would have totally forgotten about O'Reilly except that his ratings have grown and the Left totally hates him, I assume, because people watch and he's to the Right of Tom Brokaw. That alone makes me tune in from time to time, but only if I'm on the computer and I want background noise.

When Rush Limbaugh started taking the country by storm in the early 1990s, many people thought he was just a fad and his listeners and bunch of dupes. But Rush has remained interesting and unique despite the many rightwing hybrids that followed. Rush can inspire people to be proud of their freedom and their country and he can captivate an audience talking about almost anything..

When I listen to Rush, I tire of the callers that either want to kiss his ass or make personal attacks. It's much more interesting just to hear him read news stories and comment. Once in a while a caller will make good retorts to Rush and Rush can get flummoxed and it's interesting to watch the match play out. In January I was going to the bank and an articulate caller that sounded black was getting the Left's talking points out rather well. Republicans were in the bosom of corporations and the war was for oil and what not. He wasn't going to sway any conservatives with his talk, but he got it out in a way that was impressive just the same. Instead of dismissing him, Rush treated him respectfully as he will usually do with anyone that doesn't just start attacking him personally. He asked the caller questions about what else was wrong with America and then the caller stepped into a bear trap.

The caller said, "I think it's harmful when religion plays too big a place in politics."

Rush said, "See folks, this is why I'm the host. I'm sure many of you would have been done with this caller already, but I knew if we waited long enough, we'd hit the jackpot. I totally agree. I think Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton play way too significant of a role in American politics and it harms people."

At that point the smart and articulate caller was done for. He couldn't make his point about Bush, because he had to explain why Jackson and Sharpton were different. Where O'Reilly would have yelled and called him a bigot, Rush simply pointed out how Christianity is a danger and scourge of the secular mainstream unless it originates from race pimps. A total Judo move that other Right-of-Center hosts couldn't make so gracefully. I don't see O'Reilly doing pulling that off.

Long ago, Rush appeared on the CNBC show Donahue/Posner. Posner being this Russian communist "journalist" propagandist that existed simply for the state to run messages through. Donahue loved the guy and treated him as some sort of objective thinker. Rush made a flippant comment on the show about how there were more communists working in American journalism than Republicans. Posner said name one and Rush named Posner. Phil got a big kick out of it and Rush came back to the show several times. The last time Rush appeared the topic was a typical class warfare message about how the rich got richer in the 1980s. Rush reminded Phil and the audience that Phil was quite wealthy himself and much of it came in the 1980s defending the little guy. Why not give that money back to the little guy, asked Rush. Point made. Phil wasn't happy about the observation and Rush was never invited back. O'Reilly should have been watching.

It's great to see O'Reilly make the Left mad and it's not like he doesn't take on issues that are important or even noble, but he lacks the grace and humor to make his points stick. Everything is doom and gloom and I better tune in every night so he can save me by strong-arming some politician to do the right thing. We're not the Czechs in 1938 or the Polish in 1939. We don't need another Dick Morris convinced that every human foible is cured by a roll call vote. Have fun with these self-important liberals that want to save humanity from itself instead of becoming a right-0f center version of the same.

Now maybe the discord is only in my own ear as I grow more libertarian, but I find that both politicians and commentators are so convinced that we'll choke on our own spit save for them. It doesn't make good government nor good television. And yet, I'll still tune in from time to time anyway, because O'Reilly is still an American original and as an oppositional figure quite compelling at times even if not altogether satisfying.

Maybe it's like the Yankee fans that were too tough on Mantle for not being DiMaggio. O'Reilly isn't Rush, regardless of how many long balls he hits. Rush's tongue races the field timing the fly ball just right and making it look easy, while O'Reilly can be seen having it out with the umpire at the plate, probably right, but indignant enough that you watch for the confrontation rather than to win the game.

SUDDENLY PINK AS THE ROSES

Paul Haggis, the Canadian director of "Crash", this year's Oscar winner for best picture, will lead a protest in Hollywood this weekend against the war in Iraq, now three years old, organizers said.

The Canadian director, whose gritty racial drama won three Oscars in the March 5 Academy Awards ceremony, will be flanked by US actors Martin Sheen and Maria Bello and singer and social activist Harry Belafonte.

What do you want to bet that Haggis is marching simply to get his LIGS (Liberal In Good Standing) card back after beating sentinmental favorite, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN?

No true bleeding heart liberal would have dared made Matt Dillon heroic at the end of CRASH. How about making Hilary Swank's mother a lazy welfare cheat in MILLION DOLLAR BABY? This guy is simply trying to save his reputattion.

CRAZY

Just when you think you've seen everything there is to see in baseball, how about today's games in the WBC Round 2.

In the early game, heavily favored Venezuela gets pounded by Cuba, 7-2. The game turned in the 6th inning on a ground ball that slipped between the buttons into 10-time Gold Glove winner Omar Vizquel's jersey. He played it off his chest and then there was no ball to throw to first. Next batter, Vizquel boots a sure double play, and the third guy smacks a 3-run homer on the way to a 5-run inning that puts the game away.

In the second game, it's Japan 3, USA 3 in the top of the 8th, bases loaded for Japan, 1 out, speedster on third. Fly ball to short left. Runner tags and scores easily on a weak throw. Buck Martinez comes out of the dugout to appeal at third. Second base umpire calls safe. Martinez appeals to the home plate umpire, an American. Home plate ump overrules second base ump and calls the runner out, three outs. Replay shows the runner did not leave early. USA wins 4-3 on a walkoff bases-loaded single.

Tell me again, why isn't replay used in baseball? Most baseball calls are easy in super slo-mo. By the time the crew chief gets his headset on, the right call will be speaking to him.

MAY I SPEAK FREELY?

While Cuba played the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, a spectator in the stands raised a sign saying: "Down with Fidel," sparking an international incident that escalated Friday with the velocity of a major league fastball.

The image of the man holding the sign behind home plate was beamed live Thursday night to millions of TV viewers _ including those in Cuba. The top Cuban official at the game at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan rushed to confront the man.

The brouhaha gathered steam Friday when Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma, called the sign-waving "a cowardly incident." Cuba's Revolutionary Sports Movement exhorted Cubans to demonstrate in Havana late Friday, saying U.S. and Puerto Rican authorities were involved in "the cynical counterrevolutionary provocations."

The Cuba situation has upset me for a long time, but can only smile when the Cuban government calls such a protest a cowardly act. We all know the cowardly act is a leader that won't allow dissent.

I was watched Bill Maher's new show tonight. It's the left wing version of Dennis Miller's CNBC show practically stealing his whole format minus the chimp. Maher was relentless about Bush, and Halburton and the war and not once did Bush's SS men run in and pull the plug. Castro loving Hollywood types should maybe take note.

The Cuban Baseball Federation, in a statement released Friday in San Juan, said authorities failed to provide security and preserve the spirit of the sporting event, and "evidently had no intention of doing so."

The Cubans considered withdrawing from the tournament because of "the lack of security and respect" but decided to remain after Puerto Rican promoters made guarantees, the federation said in a statement without elaborating.

An anti-Castro Web site, therealcuba.com, identified the protester only as Enrique, and carried his own account of the incident.

"The Cubans were upset with the incident that happened last night, and they want to make sure it doesn't happen again," said John Blundell, spokesman of Major League Baseball, which helped establish the tournament. "We are doing everything that we can to ensure the safety of fans and the delegations."

Anything funny about that quote from Blundell? "The Cubans were upset with the incident. . ." Which Cubans were upset? The ones losing their grip on the country or those under the tyranny?

But secondly, what does his last quote mean? That kind of brilliant double-speak is going to come in handy when major league baseball allows Barry Bonds to play baseball this year despite his cheating.

SURPRISE ENDING

My house is almost ready to go to market. I'm leaning against using an agent, because they get big bucks that I'd rather see riding on my own hip. But they do know the market and I thought they might have a better idea of target price and what not. Yesterday I met with a married couple from Remax. They gave me the subtle version of the hard sell. They came with an impressive packet full of material, but their 5% commission is a bit much. In fact, I could list the house myself and not sell it for 9 months and still make more money.

Today Al from Century 21 came by to meet me. I was changing the lightbulb on the front porch when he walked up all unassuming. He just stood and waited for me to finish. I took him through the house with the tour and he gave me a similar packet of information with comps and what not. He asked how long I thought it would be and I said it would be done in the next few weeks. He was wearing a name tage that Al Osuna.

Tom: Wasn't there a ballplayer named Al Osuna. He played for the White Sox.
Al: You're thinking of Antonio Osuna.
Tom: That's right, but I seem to remember an Al Osuna too.
Al: Yeah, I retired from baseball and do Real Estate full time now.
Tom: So you use to play ball? ( His deadpan delivery made me think he was joking)
Al: Yeah, I played with the Astros. I'm familiar with the area from Spring Training.
Tom: Middle Reliever?
Al: Yeah
Tom: I think I had you in the baseball league.
Al: I was a cheap guy that could fill out a roster.
Tom: You had a great WHIP. (He laughs)
Al: I haven't played in a long time. I started getting into real estate back then and I don't think I'd be in it now without baseball.
Tom: You use to eat up some innings.
Al: Yeah. You want me to call you in a few weeks?
Tom: That's not a bad idea. Your number is in this packet?
Al: Yeah
Tom: We'll talk soon.

Later I looked Al Osuna up and he was right. I had Antonio Osuna, who had a much better WHIP.

PROBLEM WITH THE MOVIES

When movies began to shift to the left it wouldn’t necessarily bother you to see a businessman or corporation as a villain. It was still a fresh idea. Fred MacMurray played a great cad in THE APARTMENT. Steve McQueen managed to be the hero and the villain in the THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR.

The Military Industrial Complex was also ripe for satire and villainy. After so many heroic World War II film, DR. STRANGELOVE was a nice dose of balance.

And who didn’t like to see Sidney Poitier give it to the man in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT after so many blacks in film history were subservient to whitey?

Wasn’t it fun to watch Katharine Hepburn outsmart and out-lawyer Spencer Tracy in ADAM’S RIB?

Wasn’t it interesting to see Al Pacino play a non stereotypical homosexual in a mainstream movie like DOG DAY AFTERNOON?

None of the above movies were offensive and they were all believable and progressive at the same time. The intention may or may not have been to push the political dialogue to the left, but they didn’t hit you over the head with social policy, they just showed you characters behaving rationally in the context of good storytelling.

From what I’ve read, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN could fit into the same tradition of the aforementioned films. The problem is that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN was stale before it was even made. Although it’s in some ways very original, it’s not surprising. We already know that society is the villain in this one without reading any further than the premise.

Remember when Jonathan Demme stuck to the novel of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and let his psycho be a homosexual? He was so in danger of losing his liberal card that he was made to atone by making PHILADELPHIA. And his movies have been right on the PC plantation ever since.

PASSION OF THE CHRIST was ignored by the Academy and called anti-Semitic on the basis of a line or two while others simple dismissed it as too violent. But suicide bomber movies like PARADISE NOW are nominated in all their glory.

The problem with movies isn’t that they’re liberal, but that they’re so reliably liberal that they have nothing original left to say. Given a list of characters and their situations and you can almost write the movie yourself.

A few months ago we were playing poker and I was in the minority defending the war in Iraq. The same guys that talk in the familiar center-left talking points concerning that issue have been relentless in their lampooning of BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. There was debate as to whether KK, JJ or KJ should be referred to as a Brokeback Mountain hand. Lately in another game I’ve been playing in, a player has been quoting “I don’t know how to quit you” when he’s on a draw and faces a tough bet. He’ll use the accent and he always gets a big laugh. It’s not insignificant that when I first knew him in the late 1990s he invited us all to his birthday party at a pizza joint that he was also using as a charity event for Aids. And the same guy has two gay brothers for crying out loud.

When Ang Lee accused the Christian Right of calculated silence on his movie, he was simply too self-involved to realize that the people offended by movies like his are the least likely to watch movies anyway. The average parent is probably more offended by the kids cussing in BAD NEWS BEARS.

The reason so many people are teasing BROKEBACK is that we’ve been given such a steady diet of the same PC tribulations that they cease to be tribulations anymore. Issue movies are no longer stories with complex heroes and villains, but too often the same black and white good guys and bad guys that the Left has always ridiculed in the old rightwing movies.

The result for people like me who like movies is that I wind up seeing them on DVD or HBO if at all. It’s not a boycott, but casual indifference.

Some people in Hollywood understand this enough that they make more even-handed movies. For as much as a Bolshevik as Tim Robbins is personally, he does a good job of making his rightwing characters real people. Bob Roberts was a much more appealing character than we could have expected even if he was the bad guy. I thought DEAD MAN WALKING was so even-handed that I was surprised to find that the intent was for me to feel sorry for Sean Penn. Even CRADLE WILL ROCK makes Bill Murray’s anti-communist character more human and sympathetic than any others I could name.

Now maybe Robbins is so secure in his beliefs that he doesn’t think he needs to create cartoon villains or obvious heroes to make his points. That so many others do so is maybe a sign of insecurity in those beliefs. One of the Greeks maybe Aristotle said that all ideas should be freely expressed among the educated even those ideas that seem obviously wrong because experience shows that so many seemingly wrong ideas turned out to be right and without discussing bad ideas it’s hard to remember the merits of the good ideas in the first place. In other words, the biggest champion of the truth is an open dialogue.

I don’t mind political movies, even ones I disagree with. I admire someone like Clooney for tackling political subjects although I think his postulating that this act is noble, dangerous, and somehow career threatening is overstated to the point of comedy. What the movies lack is an open-dialogue that doesn’t even need to seek the truth, but it just needs to provide some variety.

HOW TO RUIN A STATE

The New York Times has a great article on how Vermont is a beautiful place that people are fleeing.

Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.

While Vermont's population of young people shrinks, the number of older residents is multiplying because Vermont increasingly attracts retirees from other states. It is now the second-oldest state, behind Maine. Arthur Woolf, an economist at the University of Vermont, said that by 2030, there would be only two working-age Vermonters for every retiree.

Without more working people, Mr. Douglas said, "we won't have tax revenue for anything other than public education and Medicaid. There'll be no money for anything else."

This is an economics question. You get the behavior you subsidize. Vermont was once a conservative state, but the influx of outsiders over the last 30 years turned it into a bastion of socialism. So today their population is shifting toward those who most benefit from socialism, the elderly. Meanwhile, productive citizens and companies are moving to the places that they are valued.

Jennifer Black of Walden, Vt., now in Stoneham, Mass., said she contemplated returning, with two children for Vermont's schools. But jobs for her husband, a defense industry engineer, are "hard to come by" in Vermont, as are some conveniences.

"When I'm up there visiting, I think I would love to live up there," said Ms. Black, 36. "The air's so fresh." But, she added, "you have to drive half an hour to a grocery store. I can walk to a grocery store from here. There's a place where my kids can take swimming lessons readily available here."

Jennifer Black probably considers herself an environmentalist and she'd probably tell you that she hates the idea of drilling in ANWR, but when it comes to her own family, she wants a grocery stores and community pools. What she wants is urban sprawl just like everyone else.

And Daniel M. Fogel, the University of Vermont's president, says some have not grasped the seriousness of the problem. They believe a shrinking population will prevent overdevelopment, but these "antisprawl folks are the very people who tend to value very highly the environmental protections and the social programs, which the state is not going to be able to afford if the working population shrinks," Mr. Fogel said.

Here is Vermont's problem. When the biggest voice of reason in your state is a college president, you know you're living behind the iron curtain. "Hey listen to me. I want the people's paradise too, but we need nasty filthy littering human beings to foot the bill."

FEBRUARY MOVIES

Not much action this month. Too much poker and reading

BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970) - Sam Peckinpah’s follow-up to THE WILD BUNCH packs just one blood-letting scene and that’s the death of a large dessert lizard intended for food. Jason Robards is his usual solid as the title character and some decent characters actors like Slim Pickens and David Warner help too, but I don’t understand this movie’s reputation as a classic. The overly broad comedy coupled with the overdone death of the west theme doesn’t bring any freshness to either. The great MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE was savaged by critics for much less than this. Of his films I have liked THE GETAWAY most followed by RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY and then the WILD BUNCH, but I didn’t love any of them. I saw STRAW DOGS last year and was pretty disappointed. Either his films are too dated or I just don’t respond.

JUNEBUG (2005) – After torturing Trish with some of my recent art house choices, she was quite happy that I selected this film. The story of a city sophisticate returning to his rural North Carolina roots could be full of Doc Hollywood gags and Hee Haw references but it was instead a very human picture. Amy Adams is getting the buzz because she plays the most hyper of the characters and steals most scenes, but a lot can be said for the rest of the cast that lets her do it gracefully. The underrated Scott Wilson plays the father as a typical southern patriarch dealing with an overbearing wife. Wilson was the other killer in the 60s docudrama IN COLD BLOOD. He was also a victim of Charlize in MONSTER, the one that made me want to see her fry post haste. What’s exceptional about the film is the way Alessandro Nivola’s son character has mixed emotions throughout about family and obligation. Most movies would simply give him anger or cowardice or some simply emotion to play off for 90 minutes. Here we get to see him make the struggle that probably led to his leaving in the first place. Celia Weston is the mother character that you’ll recognize from other movies and TV shows.

+METROPOLITAN (1990) – It was finally released a few weeks ago on DVD, Criterion Collection even. I wonder if that was the holdup, they needed to dig up some extras. It’s a story about some college aged Manhattan kids who are back for Christmas holidays participating in the debutante season. A kid less rich is befriended by the group and he’s in a sense the audience’s eyes and ears to that world. I didn’t even like it when I first rented it in 1995. I thought it was slow and without much point. The following year it came up in conversation at work and I was surprised how many lines I had remembered. I decided that it was deceptively witty and when I revisited it soon after I became a big fan and still am. For all the times I’ve seen it, this was the first time in letterbox. Director Whit Stillman gave commentary joined by the editor and actors Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols. The film was made super low budget and they detail that process in the commentary. One of the most interesting things is that these kinds of rich kids are usually the villains in movies. Here they’re quite human despite the money.

LORD OF WAR (2005) – It begins as a comedy on the arms industry and it’s quite effective, but midway through Nick Cage develops a conscience of sorts and this turns the film into a sermon. Shortly after the reform, Cage snaps out of his worry and becomes just as numb as before. You realize later that Cage has a moment of clarity simply because the audience likes him too much and the political points are being lost. But since the movie has no where to go with a reformed Cage he simply reverts. Ethan Hawke shows up as the federal agent assigned to bring Cage down and boy does that guy need a hamburger. The way Cage bounces from concerned husband and father to indifferent crook is a major flaw and the ending doesn’t pack the intended punch. If the filmmakers simply had the guts to make Cage aloof all the way through with no consequences, this could have been a classic black comedy. Otherwise they should have simply made another Syriana.

HIDE AND SEEK (2005) – That horror film where DeNiro’s little girl seems eerie is alright for the genre, but not entirely satisfying. They do a decent enough job of fooling the audience for a spell, but the movie only has one way to end once you guess it. I suppose most will do so somewhere before we’re supposed to be surprised.

THE OSCARS

This use to be an anticipated event for me, but I feel so indifferent this year. I saw Crash on DVD and I haven't seen any of the other Best Picture nominees. My gut is that I'll enjoy CAPOTE the most and that I'll admire GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK despite the politics, while Munich and Brokeback will be less impressive.

First, I don't understand why Ang Lee continues to be treated as a major film artist. Now I didn't see his early Chinese language films and I'm told they're pretty good, but his stuff in the last ten years is overrated in my mind. I liked SENSE AND SENSIBILITY enough, but could ICE STORM been more depressing? Could CROUCHING TIGER been more silly. Could THE HULK have been slower? Now probably any director would have been nominated for BROKEBACK, but I don't get the Ang Lee glow just the same.

I think MUNICH puts a different spin on SCHINDLER'S LIST. I originally thought SCHINDLER was Spielberg getting in touch with his Jewish heritage, but to make a movie about the Munich situation and base it on the discredited book Vengeance means that even Schindler's was less about oppression and more about fashion. It wasn't that Jews were victims, but that they were victims of Nazis. Or maybe the holocaust is important because America ignored it. It's our shame. Now that we're Israel's biggest supporters and in a sense doing what some wish we would have done sooner than 1945, it doesn't count for squat either. I mean doesn't it seem like the fashionable just sit back and wait for America to take a position so that they can take the other side?

One more thing. . . This suicide bomber film, PARADISE NOW, makes Pat Buchanan 1992 convention speech about the culture war seem naive and understated. It's one thing to make endless McCarthy demon pieces, but to treat the murder of women and children as a valid political statement and its participants as normal people is diseased. What was it about the Holocaust that they didn't like again?

TOO MUCH INFORMATION

I suppose this only helps its Oscar chances. From today's New York Post.

March 2, 2006 -- The makers of the gay cowboy flick "Brokeback Mountain"
were too rough on sheep, an animal-rights group charged yesterday.

SCOTCH TASTING

For the low low price of $10 I was given the opportunity to try seven varieties of single malt scotch last night. They began light and fruity and ended dark and smoky, each having its own character and flavor traits or that's what I was told. I did like some better than others but I wasn't tasting basil in one and roses in another. It tasted a lot like whisky.

Leading the taste fest was a mid 30s distributor dude who wore the satan version of goatee and clothing that looked dress-up for a beach campfire. He wore an odd necklace made of a leather strap and dangling from the end was rocky thing that suggested a talisman. Also on hand was a fortyish dame of Mediterranean descent that looked every bit the party girl back in her day. She was dressed better than the dude wearing an expensive enough black outfit, but still acted the party girl by showing as much cleavage as possible even if it meant carrying her arms in such a way. She worked for the company that owns several distilleries that comprise the Johnny Walker family.

The tasting started 20 minutes late so the guys that showed up 20 minutes earlier started doing shots and were toasted enough that one was trying to get the phone number of a waitress and another one was trying to stump the experts about the production of scotch. My favorite of his questions was "Does the residual sugar in a cask of scotch effect its viscosity." The satan dude simply said pass. The women stuck somewhere between girl and lady attempted an answer, but this being an hour into the event and she having tried 7 varieties of scotch and all of 102 pounds, the eyes were having trouble staying open. The question came from behind me and since I couldn't see the dude asking it, her eyes as she answered made me think that they were slowly hypnotizing her.

The beach guy explained that single malt results only from the best stock on any given year. The rest of the scotch is use to blend a more consistent though less expensive product. Johnny Walker Red is a combination of around 20 different scotches anywhere from 3-8 years old. Johnny Walker Black is from 20 different kinds at least 12 years old. The expensive Blue Label Johnny Walker has some Scotch aged around 50 years

I also learned that single malt isn’t the same as single barrel. Single malt simply has to come from the same batch. The explanation as to why some of the stock is better than the rest wasn’t quite explained to my satisfaction. He kept saying it was like stew where once it’s cooked to a peak level it’s perfect to eat, but the stew cooked not quite enough or just too much has to be blended together to make an even product. The stew that is cooked just right becomes single malt. I should have asked him why they don’t cook it all to the peak levels, but you could only get in so many questions before the next round of fire water was burning your tongue.

The expensive scotch prices of today are a result of scotch’s decline in popularity about 20 years ago. Now that scotch is back, the older varieties are scarce because production had dropped due to demand. You can blame the Japanese that consume the stuff in great numbers.

The owner told me of his woes. He owns but four stores and the big ABC chain is buying in such bulk that he’s getting squeezed. He told me of a champagne brand that he could get at wholesale for $29 that ABC was selling for $28. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he should make ABC his wholesaler. He also kept pushing people to see his Metro West store that stocks 700 kinds of beer. That I might try.

I think the intent of the evening was to get me interested in buying a bottle of scotch especially since I was given a $5 coupon to do so. The reality is that I tasted so many different kinds of straight whisky that I’d just as soon not see another glass for 6 months. Even something you like has its limits. I can’t even imagine drinking anything the color of iced tea. But if I do ever buy the vile stuff again, I might try something he called Highland Park. It reminded me of bourbon with a thick smoky taste and the burning aftertaste that reminded me of those Fire sticks we use to buy at 7-11 in our youth.

SOME OTHER GREAT MOMENTS

In response to E's post.

I can think of a few that should make the list that I personally enjoyed in my lifetime:

- Jim Leyritz Homer off Mark Wohlers in Game 4 of the 1996 World Series that ruined him and started and new Yankee legacy.

- Kirby Puckett's Homer in the 10th inning of game 7 to win the 1991 World Series. I find this homer, this game and this series more interesting than Joe Carter's Walk-off shot in the 1993 series.

- Tom Watson beating Jack Nicklaus at Pebble Beach for the 1982 U.S. Open. It was one of the few times that I was ever rooting against my Dad's guy Nicklaus.

- The Patriots overcoming the Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl. I especially liked how Madden said they should sit on the ball and play for overtime and how they defied him by marching down the field and booting the ball through the uprights.

- The Pine Tar game in 1983. I was watching it live on sattelite dish. I remember that the announcers weren't sure why they were measuring Brett's bat against home plate. If you see the tape Graig Nettles celebrates by pounding his mit just moments before the ump calls Brett out and Brett storms out of the dugout. Nettles later wrote a book about that season and hated the decision to replay the game, but did say that it would in some funny way give rookie Don Mattingly a chance to extend a hit streak that this particular game ended. If he had connected, Mattingly would have had something like 28 games straight. That would have been the weirdest hitting streak on record. The whole thing resulted from Billy Martin seeing Brett's bat earlier in the series, and remembering that Thurman Munson was called out for the same violation after hitting a single in the 1970s. A bad rule no doubt, but I couldn't understand why the league office would overturn the umpires when blown calls have ruined many more significant contests.

- Pete Rose beating Cobb. It never should have been broken. How did he do it? How could anyone ever catch Rose now?

- Ripken beating another impossible record and leaving only Dimaggio's hitting streak as untouchable.

- Nolan Ryan umpteenth no-hitter. Sandy Koufax retired at 30. How could Ryan be strking out a guy per inning at the age of 45?

- Barry Bonds hitting his last legitmate homer back in 1993.

- Mark McGwire hitting his last legitmate homer in 1991.

- Bonds inviting McGwire's children to watch him break Daddy's record in 2001.

More to follow after some thought

Book Review: WILD AND OUTSIDE

ROOKIE EFFORT

Several years ago I really enjoyed WORD FREAK by Stefan Fatsis. In the mood for a baseball book, I ordered Fatsis's WILD AND OUTSIDE: How a Renegade Minor League Revived the Spirit of Baseball in America's Heartland, (c)1995. WILD AND OUTSIDE was Fatsis's first book, solidly reported but tremendously dull.

The opening paragraph teased me that the Northern League, an independent pro league with teams in out of the way towns with serviceable stadiums and some baseball history like Winnipeg and Duluth, was taking shape in 1994 at just the time when the infamous strike cut short the 1994 MLB season. Hm, that sounds interesting. The final sentence says "No one, after all, owns the game more than the fans." Sentimental, nice. In between, scant mention of either promising premise.

I should have read the Acknowledgements first. Fatsis thanks journalists who introduced him to baseball people and thanks the owners of the Northern League teams. He followed the owners around with a tape recorder and notebook and the books reads that way. It's all about the business of baseball, and not in an insightful or thought-provoking way as Costas presented it in FAIR BALL; rather, with the joyless bottom-line focus of a new club owner who is trying to still love the game but is mostly concerned with gate receipts, concession sales, getting the local press off his back, and fielding a winning team.

What made WORD FREAK, an insider's look at the strange world of competitive Scrabble, so great was how Fatsis became part of the story. The hook was his foray into the varied neuroses of the players and the allure of the game itself, to which the author himself succumbed over the course of his reporting. Here he's an outsider, a reporter more concerned with fact-checking than with human interest. He's just trying to get the story, and forgetting to tell one.

Worse, he's an outsider writing to outsiders. No baseball fan needs to be told that "K" is scorekeeper notation for strikeout or that "to DL a guy" means to put him on the disabled list. Assume some knowledge on the reader's part or it isn't a baseball book.

The bottom line for me is that I don't *want* to understand the business side of minor league baseball. What I love about minor league baseball is that the business side is so far removed from the experience of the fan in the seats. Around here it's a short drive to the Reading Phillies, Harrisburg Senators or Lancaster Barnstormers. The baseball may not be as good as in Philly, but the overall experience is much more festive than a night at Citizens Bank Park, where the fan wants to care like he used to but just can't. The Reading Phillies pack the house most every night to hear some local girl sing the National Anthem, watch the ostrich-man fling hot dogs into the seats, and watch kids perform various feats of nonsense between innings. I don't want to know the owner is in the press box grinning because it looks like the rain is going to pass to the north and give him another 12 outs of concession sales, or fretting because the team bus broke down--I just want to enjoy the fun. Seeing the game through the owners' eyes was pretty depressing. As a fan, I don't want to know how tough a business baseball is. I just want to enjoy a night at the ballpark.

I am going to need to read something else before the season starts. Any suggestions?

50 GREATEST SPORTS MOMENTS

1. 1980 Miracle On Ice
10. Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech
49. Doug Flutie's hail mary

Your list will differ.

NOT LETTING PRISONERS OF WAR DIE FROM STARVATION CONSIDERED "CRUEL"

Experts see medical ethics violations at Guantanamo - Yahoo! News

This story is quite halarious. There is nothing in the story that is different from what I wittnessed as a psychologist in the Bureau of Prisons for years. If what they are doing in Guantanamo is wrong, then every Federal Prison policy in the nation must be reevaluated.

I watched a man who refused to end a hunger strike, get strapped down into a chair, then force fed through a tube. It is indeed a horrible experience and a rough duty. But what is the alternative? Letting someone die of starvation? I guess since Terry Shivo, the left in this country consider keeping someone from starving to be "cruel." Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...

BARNEY FIFE IS NO LONGER

Don Knotts, who kept generations of TV audiences laughing as bumbling Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" and would-be swinger landlord Ralph Furley on "Three's Company," has died. He was 81.

Knotts, whose shy, soft-spoken manner was unlike his high-strung characters, once said he was most proud of the Fife character and doesn't mind being remembered that way.

His favorite episodes, he said, were "The Pickle Story," where Aunt Bee makes pickles no one can eat, and "Barney and the Choir," where no one can stop him from singing.

As a kid, I laughed myself silly at the Apple Dumpling Gang and Private Eyes. The Andy Griffith Show wasn't the same without him. He even had that cameo in Pleasantville.

VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

Bruce Willis, angered over the media's systematically negative portrayals of the war, is in talks to produce and star in a movie based on the heroic exploits of Michael Yon, a former Green Beret who maintains a blog at www.michaelyon-online.com.

Mr. Willis traveled to Iraq in 2003 and said last fall that he was "baffled to understand why the [positive] things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported."

The forthcoming movie, Mr. Willis said, will dramatize the lives of "these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom."

THE SOFT DECLINE

It's easy to look at every new generation and see the decline of Western Civilization. The practice tends to get a bit old. But sometiems an essayist is to astute in their observations that it's fun reading about the latest decline. Theodore Dalrymple is just such a writer:

Recently in London a correspondent of a left-liberal Dutch newspaper interviewed me, a decent, civilized sort—one of us, in short. I am sure that he brought up his children to say please and thank you, probably in several languages.

The correspondent asked me: what was wrong with tattooing, if that was how people wanted to adorn themselves?

I asked him whether he would have himself tattooed—whether he would be happy if his teenaged children had themselves tattooed—and if not, why not? After all, if he would not like it, he must have some inner objection to tattooing.

True, he said, but tattooing was not illegal. And since even I, who deprecated it, did not think that it should be illegal, there was nothing further to say about it. If tattooing was legal, it was thus of no social, moral, or cultural significance.

I tried to point out some of the cultural meanings of the vogue for tattooing. First, it was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.

Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.

And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.

But the correspondent’s premise that the legality of an act was the sole criterion by which one could or should judge it chilled me. It is a sinister premise. It makes the legislature the complete arbiter of manners and morals, and thus accords to the state quasi-totalitarian powers without the state’s ever having claimed them. The state alone decides what we have or lack permission to do: we have to make no moral decisions for ourselves, for what we have legal permission to do is also, by definition, morally acceptable.

Even worse than the correspondent’s implicitly totalitarian assumption was his lack of awareness of how societies cohere, and how social existence becomes tolerable, let alone pleasant. After all, the law does not prohibit rudeness, boorishness, and an infinity of unpleasant habits. But it is clear that if, for example, the prevalence of boorishness increases, life in society becomes more filled with friction and danger.

What I found so odd about the correspondent were his perfect manners and refined tastes. But so little confidence did he have in the value of the things that he valued that he seemed indifferent to the mechanism of their disappearance or destruction. This is the way a civilization ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

There is much to be said about the silent revolutions of apathy, but what I enjoyed most was this line -- "Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion." --

It's not just that they're low class, but that like a Hallmark card, they're someone else's sentiment borrowed by the user to substitute for truth.

We all go through periods of trying to identify ourselves by shorthand. Clothing and hair styles change and we change with them, but tatoos linger long past a time in which they hold any context.

A person who gets a tatoo is making a bet with himself that the sentiments are timeless, because he does not intend to change. Since it's a sucker bet, we should line up as the opposition. Can you imagine the money we could make removing tatoos in say ten years?

REAL ISSUES AND MEDIA ISSUES

Rush gets to the heart of the Port scandal.

Do you know when this story broke? This story broke before the Cheney story. This story's been out there longer than the Cheney story has been out there. Do you feel manipulated by the mainstream press? I told you last week, John Gambling, who is on WABC in New York, two hours prior to this program is, had Ann Compton of the White House press corps on during that whole Cheney kerfuffle, and he said, "Ann, what about this port story?"

She had no idea what it was. She had no idea what it was. All last week the media's marching orders were: "Screw Cheney! Get Cheney! Indict Cheney! Hope that Whittington dies. Make David Gregory the new pope of media, whatever," but this news has been out there long before the Cheney thing hit.

Another example of the media being a follow-the-leader game.

PORTS

If Bush would say something like the quote below, I would agree with him. Instead he says nothing. He is very big on saying nothing. But I guess there is some benefit in letting your opponents do all the talking, since they can't help but expose themselves as hypocrites who will try anything for political gain. After all their crying that not all Muslims are terrorists, they don't want this deal because (i) all Muslims are terrorists, and (ii) by stating their opposition and making Bush pull out his first veto pen, if they get the port-enabled terrorist attack they've been hoping for, it can be because Bush handed over national security to Arabs. Never mind that not all Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslims-- you're missing the point, that everything bad that has happened or could happen is Bush's fault.

The Dubai port deal could also serve to increase the depth and breadth of people-to-people contacts between America and important Muslim countries in the Reaganesque "trust but verify" mold. It is useful in this regard to remember the example of the U.S. International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, which for decades has trained foreign armies in unstable countries to stay out of politics and improved U.S. understanding of complex societies. It seems patently hypocritical that America wants democracy in the Middle East, champions capitalism and global integration, pushes for reform, transparency, and anti-corruption practices in business, and then turns around and tells those who are practicing what America preaches, Sorry, we think you folks are a bunch of terrorists, so we don't want you on our shores and don't trust you running our ports.

It is understandable that American politicians would want to seek clarifications, safeguards, and accountability on the DP World deal in honor of all those who were mercilessly murdered on that tragic September morning. But the best way to honor their memories is to use the Dubai deal as a model to build effective bridges to the Arab and Muslim world — as we did in Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan — instead of erecting barriers that reveal America's paranoia and fear about some Islamist doomsday scenario no one can predict, all the while alienating the very people we need to help raise up the Muslim world's disaffected so they are not so desperate to tear us down.

PRESIDENTS DAY REPORT

Memo from previous presidents to Bush 43:

"We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side." -Thomas Jefferson

Europe's day has passed. Couching it in gentler language does not alter the fact, no more than "unifying" a hodgepodge of weak nations makes them strong as a group.

"What a colossus shall we be." -Jefferson

The framers did not shy away from a projection of strength. There was no shame in being first, in staking out a leadership position, in assuming and embracing the responsibilities of leadership. And this at a time when backing it up meant a steelier resolve and considerably more sacrifice than it means today.

"Any effort on our part to reason the world out of a belief that we are ambitious will have no other effect than to convince them that we add to our ambition hypocrisy." -John Quincy Adams

We are the world's lone superpower, and we believe it is in the world's best interest that things remain that way. A real superpower doesn't poll other nations to see if they agree.

"Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselvs and with all nations." -Abe Lincoln

We used to understand the obvious -- that peace is achieved through force. Or as Lt. Col. Ralph Peters so perfectly put it: "Where we cannot be loved, we must be feared." The threat of force is empty without the perception that transgressors of peace will feel the might of force. Iran has to ask itself: "Do I feel lucky?" Were I they, I'd feel a lot less lucky facing Bush than facing any of his mealymouthed opponents inside and outside the party.

"In war, anything is better than indecision. We must decide." -Warrior-president U.S. Grant

With lo these many years of hindsight, the ABB crowd has still not decided what they would have done with Iraq. How could they possibly know what to do with Iran?

"There are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and of such peculiar
horror as to make us doubt whether it is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it... What form the action shall take must depend... upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it." -Teddy Roosevelt

Or in the words of Thoreau, "Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something." Talk is cheap.

"When properly directed, there is no people in the world not fitted for self-government." -Woodrow Wilson

If we had an intellectually honest press, they would acknowledge the racism and hypocrisy in their arguments that Arabs cannot support democracy. But we already know that they think most people other than themselves are too stupid, too feeble to succeed on their own ability.

"As a nation, ...the best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example." -FDR

Perhaps the shame bus has left the station, but why not treat traitors like traitors? People who actively aim to sully the nation should be tried and, if convicted, punished to the limit of the law. At the very least, such endeavor would promote a meaningful discussion regarding strategic national interests, the avoidance of which leaves Bush deserving most of the criticism he receives.

"It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures... If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world--and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation." -Harry Truman

Maybe, maybe not, but we should discuss this like grown-ups.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any bruden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." -JFK

Today's Democrats flow where the wind blows. The wind has blown them far from their moorings, and at this point, should they care to return, it's a long and arduous trek back.

"I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again... The best way to end that threat once and for all is with a new Iraqi government -- a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people. Bringing change in Baghdad will take time and effort." -Bill Clinton

But not his time or effort. Thank God for a president who is willing to take bold world-changing action, and let history judge.

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards. If you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." -Ronald Reagan

Sources:
Alan Dowd article at nationalreview.com, 2/20/06.
THE WEEK magazine, 2/17/06, p.19.

KATRINA WITHOUT THE POLITICS

Popular Mechanics has examined the disaster and aftermath. They debunk myths and lay out what needs to be done to prevent future episodes. Here are a couple of interesting excerpts:

MYTH: "The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."--Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005

REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest--and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm's landfall.

Dozens of National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters flew rescue operations that first day--some just 2 hours after Katrina hit the coast. Hoistless Army helicopters improvised rescues, carefully hovering on rooftops to pick up survivors. On the ground, "guardsmen had to chop their way through, moving trees and recreating roadways," says Jack Harrison of the National Guard. By the end of the week, 50,000 National Guard troops in the Gulf Coast region had saved 17,000 people; 4000 Coast Guard personnel saved more than 33,000.

NEXT TIME: Any fatalities are too many. Improvements hinge on building more robust communications networks and stepping up predisaster planning to better coordinate local and national resources.

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MYTH: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."--New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, press conference, Aug. 28, 2005

REALITY: Though many accounts portray Katrina as a storm of unprecedented magnitude, it was in fact a large, but otherwise typical, hurricane. On the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale, Katrina was a midlevel Category 3 hurricane at landfall. Its barometric pressure was 902 millibars (mb), the sixth lowest ever recorded, but higher than Wilma (882mb) and Rita (897mb), the storms that followed it. Katrina's peak sustained wind speed at landfall 55 miles south of New Orleans was 125 mph; winds in the city barely reached hurricane strength.

By contrast, when Hurricane Andrew struck the Florida coast in 1992, its sustained winds were measured at 142 mph. And meteorologists estimate that 1969's Category 5 Hurricane Camille, which followed a path close to Katrina's, packed winds as high as 200 mph. Two factors made Katrina so devastating. Its radius (the distance from the center of the storm to the point of its maximum winds, usually at the inner eye wall) was 30 miles--three times wider than Camille's. In addition, Katrina approached over the Gulf of Mexico's shallow northern shelf, generating a more powerful storm surge--the water pushed ashore by hurricanes--than systems that move across deeper waters. In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, the surge topped out at 30 ft.; in New Orleans the surge was 25 ft.--enough to overtop some of the city's floodwalls.

NEXT TIME: According to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, the Atlantic is in a cycle of heightened hurricane activity due to higher sea-surface temperatures and other factors. The cycle could last 40 years, during which time the United States can expect to be hit by dozens of Katrina-size storms. Policymakers--and coastal residents--need to start seeing hurricanes as routine weather events, not once-in-a-lifetime anomalies.

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MYTH: "They have people ... been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."--New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Sept. 6, 2005

REALITY: Both public officials and the press passed along lurid tales of post-Katrina mayhem: shootouts in the Superdome, bodies stacked in a convention center freezer, snipers firing on rescue helicopters. And those accounts appear to have affected rescue efforts as first responders shifted resources from saving lives to protecting rescuers. In reality, although looting and other property crimes were widespread after the flooding on Monday, Aug. 29, almost none of the stories about violent crime turned out to be true. Col. Thomas Beron, the National Guard commander of Task Force Orleans, arrived at the Superdome on Aug. 29 and took command of 400 soldiers. He told PM that when the Dome's main power failed around 5 am, "it became a hot, humid, miserable place. There was some pushing, people were irritable. There was one attempted rape that the New Orleans police stopped."

The only confirmed account of a weapon discharge occurred when Louisiana Guardsman Chris Watt was jumped by an assailant and, during the chaotic arrest, accidently shot himself in the leg with his own M-16.

When the Superdome was finally cleared, six bodies were found--not the 200 speculated. Four people had died of natural causes; one was ruled a suicide, and another a drug overdose. Of the four bodies recovered at the convention center, three had died of natural causes; the fourth had sustained stab wounds.

Anarchy in the streets? "The vast majority of people [looting] were taking food and water to live," says Capt. Marlon Defillo, the New Orleans Police Department's commander of public affairs. "There were no killings, not one murder." As for sniper fire: No bullet holes were found in the fuselage of any rescue helicopter.

NEXT TIME: "Rumors are fueled by a shortage of truth," says Ted Steinberg, author of Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America. And truth was the first casualty of the information breakdown that followed the storm. Hardening communications lines (see page 3) will benefit not just first responders, but also the media. Government officials have a vital role in informing the public. Ensuring the flow of accurate information should be part of disaster planning at local, state and federal levels.

HOW DARE CHENEY TALK TO FOX

Cheney finally addressed the incident Wednesday, but the forum in which he chose to do so -- in an exclusive interview with Fox News host Brit Hume -- quickly became another source of contention.

Fox News executives cast the scoop as the result of persistence and the growing clout of the top-rated cable news network.

But some Democrats and competing broadcasters charged that Cheney chose to speak only with Fox News because of a perception that the cable channel is sympathetic to the Republican administration. They called for the vice president to hold a news conference with the rest of the media.

"Now that he feels forced to talk, he wants to restrict the discussion to a friendly news outlet, guaranteeing no hard questions from the press corps," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said in a statement.

On CNN, commentator Jack Cafferty called the interview "a little bit like Bonnie interviewing Clyde. ... I mean, running over there to the Fox network -- talk about seeking a safe haven."

Now that's downright uncharitable. I don't remember CNN having such a problem when the fawning Dan Rather interviewed Bill Clinton about his memoir. We didn't see any hard hitting questions there, did we? Here's a refresher or two:

When CBS paired Rather with Connie Chung in 1993, he sought inspiration from Bill CLinton. "If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we'd take it right now and walk away winners."

or

"I read the book [My Life by Bill Clinton] completely. And I think it compares very favorably with Ulysses S. Grant's gold standard of presidential autobiographies." — Dan Rather on CNN's Larry King Live, June 18, 2004.

Sorry Dan. You probably read that Grant's autobiography was great, because people that love American history have said so, but his autobiography didn't deal with his presidency. It focused on his success during the Civil War.

But I'm sure Clinton's memoir would compare favorable with anything written by Nikita Khrushchev, something you probably have read.

THE BUST

Steelers RB Duce Staley, a week into trying to fill Jerome Bettis's shoes, is not off to a very good start.

Steelers running back Duce Staley told authorities that jewelry worth $100,000 was stolen from him during a scuffle at the entrance to a gentlemen's club near his home in South Carolina.

The incident occurred around 4 a.m. Saturday at Studio 54, about three miles from downtown Columbia, said Richland County Sheriff's Lt. Chris Cowan.

GET THE POPCORN

Paramount's new specialty division has acquired worldwide rights to Participant Prods.' global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," featuring Al Gore.

Helmed by Davis Guggenheim ("Deadwood," "The First Year"), the film, which had its world premiere at last month's Sundance Film Festival, weaves the science behind the issue of global warming with the former vice president's personal history and longtime commitment to communicating the pressing need to reverse the effects of global climate change.

What's sillier, thinking man has caused the planet to warm or to think that man can stop it? In other news. . .

Residents were digging out Monday from a winter storm that dumped more than two feet of snow on some parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, forcing travelers around the country to change their plans.

More than 20 inches of snow blanketed some spots from Maryland to New England. In Central Park in New York, a record 26.9 inches of snow piled up Sunday, breaking the mark of of 26.4 inches in December 1947, the National Weather Service said.

Why doesn't Gore do something to stop the snow too?

USE THE PHONE

The more I use email, the more I regret it. From time to time I get accused of having tone that I did not intend, which on re-reading, I can (usually) understand. The problem is that I write an email in my voice, with my tone, pitch, pace and inflection, but they read it in their voice, which may or may not line up with mine. This is why, before I send an important letter or email, I ask my wife or my assistant to read it to me aloud, so I can fix anything that doesn't play back the way I meant it to sound. I almost always need to make revisions. It can be very enlightening to hear others read your thoughts and realize how your plain meaning failed to get across.

New research confirms that email causes rampant miscommunication. In a study of email partners, Senders predicted that their tone would be correctly interpreted 80 percent of the time. Recipients believed they correctly interpreted Senders' tone 90 percent of the time. In fact, Recipients correctly interpreted Senders' tone a mere 50 percent of the time.

This explains why I make men angry and make women cry. Just what do I mean by that?

BEST AND WORST SPORTS MARKETS FOR EXPANSION

Best (recommended sport):
1. L.A. (NFL)
2. Phila (MLS)
3. Hartford (NHL)
4. Las Vegas (NBA)
5. Portland (NFL)
6. Oklahoma City (NBA)
7. Rochester NY (MLS)
8. Virginia Beach/Norfolk (NBA)
9. Northern NJ (MLB)
10. San Bernadino/Riverside (MLB)

Most Overextended:
1. Tampa/St Pete
2. Phoenix
3. Denver
4. Pitt
5. KC
6. STL
7. Milwaukee
8. Cincinnati
9. Buffalo
10. Minn/St Paul

WORSE THAN ANY Y2K ERROR

A house erroneously valued at $400 million is being blamed for budget shortfalls and possible layoffs in municipalities and school districts in northwest Indiana.

County Treasurer Jim Murphy said the home usually carried about $1,500 in property taxes; this year, it was billed $8 million.

Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses $900,000.

Officials struggled to figure out how the mistake got into the system and how it could have been prevented. City leaders said Thursday the error could cause layoffs and cost-cutting measures.

This shows how government will always eat whatever food you put in front of it, whether or not they really need it. Valparaiso will now do with less. Orlando could learn a lesson.

I've always thought the library was one of the best uses of tax money and Orlando has a great system. I paid about $40 in property taxes last year that went directly to the library system and they fine the heck out of people for late returns. The two together result in a multi-million dollar budget they can't begin to spend. Now the library is practically a blockbuster video store with a ton of DVD titles. Lately, they began stocking X-Box games. Too much money. And yet the county complains that they don't have enough money for schools.

OIL INDEPENDENCE

We have resisted the idea for a long time. But where there's a will (and a profit motive), there's a way. Is there a will? What price freedom?

Hanson: Without nuclear acquisition, a Pakistan or Iran would warrant little worry. It is no accident that top al Qaeda figures are either in Pakistan or Iran, assured that their immunity is won by reason that both of their hosts have vast oil reserves or nukes or both.

The lesson from all this is that in order to free the United States from such blackmail and dependency, we must at least try to achieve energy independence and drive down oil prices — and see that no Middle East autocracy gains nuclear weapons. Those principles, along with support for democratic reform, should be the three pillars of American foreign policy.

But you protested Marty. . .

Ang Lee answering a question in Time Magazine:

Ang, were you surprised that "Brokeback Mountain" hasn't raised more protest from the religious right?

LEE: I didn't know they would take a position of deliberate quietness, so that they wouldn't [inadvertently] promote the movie.

So Lee went into the film with the intention of offending and is quite hurt that no one cares. Are they making these movies for the public or for each other? In short, Lee was denied his shot at martyr of the year.

Next time expect something with beasts.

The Cartoons

Mark Steyn has a poignant take on the matter.

Last year, a newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published several cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, whose physical representation in art is forbidden by Islam. The cartoons aren't particularly good and they were intended to be provocative. But they had a serious point. Before coming to that, we should note that in the Western world "artists" "provoke" with the same numbing regularity as young Muslim men light up other countries' flags. When Tony-winning author Terence McNally writes a Broadway play in which Jesus has gay sex with Judas, the New York Times and Co. rush to garland him with praise for how "brave" and "challenging" he is. The rule for "brave" "transgressive" "artists" is a simple one: If you're going to be provocative, it's best to do it with people who can't be provoked.

Thus, NBC is celebrating Easter this year with a special edition of the gay sitcom "Will & Grace," in which a Christian conservative cooking-show host, played by the popular singing slattern Britney Spears, offers seasonal recipes -- "Cruci-fixin's." On the other hand, the same network, in its coverage of the global riots over the Danish cartoons, has declined to show any of the offending artwork out of "respect" for the Muslim faith.

Which means out of respect for their ability to locate the executive vice president's home in the suburbs and firebomb his garage.

Hollywood can still muster the effort to make a film of the Joe McCarthy Era, but they can't even say word one about the murder of Theo Van Gogh.

Islamo-Fascism now is the equivalent to communism in the 1950s. The Russians were once a scary enemy to those on the left and the right. They did exist once, actual cold war liberals, but you wouldn't know it from the history as told in Hollywood. That Bobby Kennedy was a close friend of Joe McCarthy and Joe was the godfather of Bobby’s daughter the recent governor of Maryland doesn't fit the frame very well.

Even in the early 1960s, when McCarthy was long dead, the McCarthy tactics were treated as buffoonery in MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, but communism wasn't treated lightly at all. The McCarthy character was the communist. This point is always lost on modern day critics that simply refer to the movie as an indictment on McCarthy.

See, you have to win the war to make light of those that won it. The Democrats and the media have been trying to do something similar lately. They have criticized Bush's surveillance program, because the success of it has allowed them to portray it as unnecessary. Although they won't show a simple cartoon out of fear, the Bush Administration is being alarmist or draconian or unconstitutional for having the same fear.

Unlike some puffed up Hollywood pontificators, I’ve always had respect for George Clooney. He may have a conspiratorial liberal belief system, but at least he has a sense of humor about himself. Sean Penn can’t even let the South Park guys poke fun. I tend to like Clooney movies and the Murrow one is probably well done, though I figure he won’t be treated as the buffoon like in the 1960s, but a real menace.

But one has to ask what exactly do liberals find offensive about McCarthy? If it’s his tactics, the great Mark Levin reminds us that they’re not above using those tactics themselves. If it’s the anti-communism, what did they find so endearing about the Berlin Wall? The composite answer is something like communism would have fallen on its own and some good Hollywood writers were "terrorized." Just listen to the language and you'll see they talk about screenwriters using psuedonyms the way mainstream Americans talk about flight 93.

Between the silence on Theo Van Gogh and the unwillingness of NBC to show Islam in a way they’d gladly show Christianity, you realize that what the cultural left really lacks is seriousness. Their act is one of day-to-day class clown, but we don’t always see it, because they don’t always smile.

We’ll win the war against terrorists and we’ll do so fighting the intelligencia the entire way. And once the enemy is good and beat, and the media can safely make fun of Muslims without threat of death, they’ll be making movies about how unnecessary the whole thing really was and how Bush violated civil liberties for nothing. For now though, the critics of the administration are secretly happy that Bush has the guts that they lack.

JANUARY MOVIES

GOING IN STYLE (1979) – I remember seeing some of this movie as a kid and I don’t know why I remembered it as a comedy except that the trailers tried to paint it as one. It’s sometimes funny but more drama than anything else. Three old men George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg decide to rob a bank out of sheer boredom. All three pull off their roles well, but I was especially impressed with Burns who rose above the schmaltz of Oh God franchise among other things. To ruin the plot, Strasberg becomes ill and dies. Burns and Carney decide to give most of the money to Carney’s nephew and they take the rest to lose in Vegas. Instead of losing they come away with a bigger stack than they got out of the bank. The whole thing is handled in a very unsentimental way and I came away enjoying it for its quiet tone and interesting performances.

SPAGHETTI WEST (2005) – A documentary about Spaghetti Westerns is quite interesting when the subject is Eastwood, but wanes when they talk about Klaus Kinski and the myriad of films with the title Django. The period of filmmaking didn’t last long, but it produced a whole lot of celluloid and it influenced the American westerns that followed.

MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004) – The movie was described as a missing time recollection and how a teenager studies UFOLOGY to learn what happened to him that day years ago when his little league game was rained out and he woke up in his basement with a bloody nose. There was also a second little leaguer that became a gay prostitute after getting a little too cozy with the baseball coach. Despite the review I read, the other kid is the one that actually dominates the film, and though I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, I’m sure it’s tame compared to the gratuitous graphic nature of this movie. Men come off pretty lousy in the piece; they are poor fathers, absentee fathers or pedophiles while the women are all long suffering.

THE CLEARING (2004) – Robert Redford shows up so infrequently these days you have to wonder what he looks for in a script to finally do a film. Here Redford is kidnapped in the first 5 minutes by Willem Dafoe and it’s easy to see that he isn’t a professional at such jobs. The men begin to have pretty normal conversations about their wives and their regrets and although one is rich and the other is poor, both wish they could have been better husbands. Redford has another woman on the side, but he still loves Helen Mirren the most and he comes to realize that during the snatching. The movie is told in separate action with Mirren and the kids learning things days after they happened inter cut with Redford on the day of the incident. I thought the movie was compelling enough but maybe the device of good guy/bad guy parallel lives has been done a bit too much. HEAT may have had the classic take on that issue.

ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930) – I’ve seen it countless times and I decided to start the new year with a Marx film to remind me that life is pretty great. I think it’s the best of the early talkies, because although it has the same technical limitations, and it’s nothing but a filmed version of their long-running stage play complete with Groucho’s asides, it still brings laughs in buckets. Groucho’s intro speech was my standard audition monologue for years. The “I shot an elephant in my pajamas” got a laugh every time. I don’t think it ever got me any parts, but it was fun to deliver. I auditioned for Disney once in college and one guy on the panel laughed all the way through. He must have been familiar with the movie.

+LOVE ACTUALLY (2004) – WHEN HARRY MET SALLY was a clever and unique film when it debuted in 1989, but it spawned so many half-assed imitators and created such an obnoxious sub genre that I have little patience for what Americans do with romantic comedies. In fact, I think that the resurgence of witty teen comedies is a direct result of creative minds tired of the adult genre. A minor teen comedy like TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU was more interesting than any romantic movie comedy that Meg Ryan has made since 1989. One romantic comedy that I liked was the Julia Roberts vehicle, NOTTING HILL. I don’t know whether it was the mostly British cast or just the fact that it didn’t try to be too cute. And now the British film, LOVE ACTUALLY takes the British version of these films one step further. It was one of the best films of 2004 and I’ve seen it twice again this month and it just plain works on every level. It finds a very honest way to deal with the subject using humor, sadness and even some sentimentality. It also helps that the cast is amazing, using about half the British actors any American could name, and some you recognize and can’t name. A few interesting Americans show up too. Like any movie with a big cast, there is a little too much of people running into one another randomly in a big town like London, but I can forgive SHORT CUTS ands MAGNOLIA for this so why not forgive this worthwhile effort too.

PIE IN THE SKY (1995) – I had no business watching this movie except that it came on when I was writing email and it had a couple of laughs and I wound up seeing too much of it to turn it off. Josh Charles stars as a guy obsessed with the traffic and his idol, John Goodman, the traffic reporter on the radio. He meets Anne Heche during college and although they have a decent spark, they lose touch until a few years later when he happens to run into her in a Los Angeles diner. The audience gets to wait around for Josh to have his big shot as traffic reporter and reconciliation with Heche. Films shown on TV are a great study of the economics of time. Why is it that we’re more likely to sit and watch something on TV, when we wouldn’t watch the same thing on DVD if it sat right in front of us? Or why is it that we’ll be held captive by some movie that comes on that we enjoy when we own the same DVD and never bother to put it in? I don’t fall victim to it as much as some I know, but now that we have HBO again, I notice that it happens with greater frequency than I would have predicted. I won’t sit and watch films on commercial networks no matter how much I like them, but I know many that will wade through the commercials instead of putting in the same DVD.

THE GREAT RAID (2005) – A war movie based on real events that lacks the rightwing Rambo heroism or the leftwing cynicism and gore. It’s simply about a group of American soldiers tasked with liberating a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The men in the camp are leftover from the Bataan death march years earlier and if disease doesn’t kill the last 500 of them, then the Japanese will probably execute them as they retreat in order to leave no war crimes witnesses. The mission holds no strategic value, but saving the men is the right thing to do. The value of honor is summed up when Benjamin Bratt tells James Franco that the mission is the most important thing any of them will ever do in their lives. Success will lead to an inner glory that the men will carry with them forever. It has a quiet sort of tone and a slow pace, the kind you might expect for a movie made for HBO. It could have been 20 minutes shorter maybe, and the subplot of the beautiful woman in the underground helping the prisoners is too movieish, but the characters mostly seem like real people. And if you consider it an ode to the old fashioned 40s era war movies, then it’s downright restrained.

+WAGES OF FEAR (1952) French film and winner of the Cannes film Festival. A group of streets bums are given the task of taking some explosives to an oil field over bumpy terrain. They’ll be risking their lives but making so much money they can’t pass up the offer. Theirs great suspense and more challenges along the way than one screenwriter generally imagines realistically. We even get the pining French girl for our hero to return too.

OCEANS 12 (2004) – It’s been on a lot this month and although preposterous it’s so much fun that I keep on in the background. Like the first, the music is good all the way through and the dialogue delivery funny in a dry sort of way. The Clooney/Pitt banter is always fun and the little things with Bruce Willis showing up and the Sixth Sense jokes are worthwhile too.

MISLEADING TRAILERS

I always hate it when a movie trailer misrepresents the movie. That same skill brings you the amusing BROKEBACK TO THE FUTURE.

NOONAN DOESN'T MISS IT

One more reason why Peggy Noonan is the sexiest woman in politics. She can sum it all up in one paragraph:

There was only one unforgettable moment, and that was in a cutaway shot, of Hillary Clinton, who simply must do something about her face. When the president joked that two people his father loves are turning 60 this year, himself and Bill Clinton--why does he think constant references to that relationship work for him?--it was Mrs. Clinton's job to look mildly amused, or pleasant, or relatively friendly, or nonhostile. Mrs. Clinton has two natural looks, the first being a dull and sated cynicism, the second the bright-eyed throaty chuckler who greets visiting rubes from Utica. The camera caught the first; by the time she realized she was the shot, she apparently didn't feel she could morph into the second. This canniest of politicians still cannot fake benignity.

SUPER BOWL FACTOID

The Steelers were the first NFL team to feature cheerleaders. That is interesting because they are now noteworthy for their commitment to not having cheerleaders.

From this article on the origins of the Steelers' logo.

WHERE NEW ORLEANS IS NOW



Courtesy ePodunk.com.

WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. . .

. . . seems to be a favorite slogan of socialists that have never lived under oppression.